Dear humour,

I am definitely after more happiness, fulfillment, career success and so on but I either don’t know what to do to attain it or I don’t know how much is enough.

OK, let me ask you this: you know when you’re hungry, right? And you know when you’re full, when you don’t need more food in your system? If so, it means that you’re in touch with your physiological needs, such as eating, sleeping, etc.

However, it seems that you’re not in touch with your emotional needs. You are in touch with the needs of others – and you like to help them (I am grateful for my ability to be of help to others). However, you don’t know what YOU yourself need.

For example, do you need a hug, do you need to be talked to nicely, do you need to be seen and heard, do you need to be respected, do you need to be acknowledged…. all those are our core emotional needs. And it seems you have suppressed them in the course of your growing up, because you felt you needed to meet the needs of your family first.

Because the child – a capable, intelligent and strong child – believes that he can help their parents feel better, make them happy, make them less sad, or make them less angry… The child believes he has that kind of power, and so tries to meet his parents’ emotional needs, instead of his own.

In fact, he suppresses his own needs. He says to himself : “I’ll be fine”, “I don’t need much”, “I shouldn’t disturb my mother with my problems, she is so burdened”, “I shouldn’t make my mother any more sad, she is so weak and fragile”. Etc etc.

You see? You focus all your attention on your loved ones, and almost completely disregard your own needs. And it has been going like that for years and years…. The result is that you don’t even know what you need, or what you want.

I am definitely after more happiness, fulfillment, career success and so on but I either don’t know what to do to attain it or I don’t know how much is enough

Before you can actually set some goals for success and fulfillment in either professional or personal arena, you would need to get in touch with your core emotional needs. You would need to turn your attention inwards, rather than outwards.

We can talk about it more, if this resonates…